I think my E-M1 does high ISO OK!

There has always been discussion how the smaller formats are not as good as FF (whatever FF is supposed to mean), being noisier etc., etc. ad nauseam.
Anyhow, using the 50-200 SWD lens on the E-M1 late at night I got this shot of a mother Brushtail possum & her young on her back taken under basic small fluro & LED lighting. The shutter speed was as low as 1/6 second & the ISO 6400 (I have this as my upper Auto ISO limit). WB, cropping, resizing & sharpening for web display all done in OV3 (all EXIF is intact here).

I know there are occasions that an image could 'look cleaner', but to me there can be too much pixel peeping at times too & I am glad to get an image at all for some occasions.

I did take a flash shot as well, but prefer the available lighting instead.

Also, another one with predominant light from the 7.5W LED bayonet light globe.

Where was this taken? Wondering if you got these from your back porch or something cause they are pretty cool. And if so, do they not care that you are walking around them taking photos?

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She is not backward in coming forward (taken back in June last year).

I couldn't find a photo where she reaches out for the food (with her very sharp claws), but there are more photos of her in my Four Thirds User Gallery.

And is quite happy for a feed & a pat (taken last night). But don't expect to pat any possum. They do have very sharp claws.

This is (at home) in the lower Blue Mountains of NSW but brushtail possums can be found in Sydney (& Melbourne) suburbs too. They tend not to be too fussy over what they eat & can also be garbage raiders.

Actually, I remember now that when I held out my hand to her last year (with no food) that she grabbed at me & also tried my finger a little but it was the claws that had me more concerned at the time because at least one had punctured the skin & so I went & had a tetanus shot to be sure (as well as washing thoroughly & expelling any blood to help clear any possible infection). There was no aggression on her part at all, just a keenness for some food.

Anyhow, this thread was started to highlight my satisfaction with low light, high ISO photography with my E-M1 (& E-M5) & these are the sort of uses I like it for. Events indoors work well with the brighter lenses too.

I once saw a mother possum who lived with her family in the ceiling space of a farmhouse in Queensland's Lockyer Vally evicting an older child from the nest. They used to come down the veranda posts from the ceiling in the early evening and be fed but this evening the mother had forced the adolescent child down the post first and was preventing it from going back up into the ceiling space. The child would swat at the mother with a paw and the mother would swat back, with a lot of hissing at each other along the way. Every time one of the swats landed you would see a tuft of fur fall from the possum which had been struck, which really gave me a quite new feel for the meaning of that old expression about "seeing the fur fly". Eventually the child got tired of the fight, descended the post onto the ground, and set off across the open ground to the trees surrounding the house.

They can be friendly and let you feed them or even touch them but they can get nasty when they get stirred up.

Anyhow, this thread was started to highlight my satisfaction with low light, high ISO photography with my E-M1 (& E-M5) & these are the sort of uses I like it for. Events indoors work well with the brighter lenses too.

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Considering the fact, that we discussed the subject matter straight away, I can indeed see no problem with high ISO. This is how it should be. The technical is not getting in the way of the actual photo.

Well exposed high ISO shots without too much PP and without pixel peeking can indeed be more than acceptable from the 16Mp sensors. However, change any of those provisos and the story is different.

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Yes, I guess that's right. Anyhow, just for the sake of a little pixel peeping, here is a 1000 pixel size crop from the RAW file with only the WB adjusted to 3000k (when viewed in my 4/3's User gallery or open image in new browser tab) of the young possum from the first photo.

I don't know if that little vertical line is a sensor issue or actually a spider's web.

I once saw a mother possum who lived with her family in the ceiling space of a farmhouse in Queensland's Lockyer Vally evicting an older child from the nest. They used to come down the veranda posts from the ceiling in the early evening and be fed but this evening the mother had forced the adolescent child down the post first and was preventing it from going back up into the ceiling space. The child would swat at the mother with a paw and the mother would swat back, with a lot of hissing at each other along the way. Every time one of the swats landed you would see a tuft of fur fall from the possum which had been struck, which really gave me a quite new feel for the meaning of that old expression about "seeing the fur fly". Eventually the child got tired of the fight, descended the post onto the ground, and set off across the open ground to the trees surrounding the house.

They can be friendly and let you feed them or even touch them but they can get nasty when they get stirred up.

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I've been hearing a little of that behaviour as she has been seeing the young one off now that it has grown some, seeing as they do live a solitary life (that info for the benefit of our overseas friends).